OU student journalist files lawsuit against university for access to records Paighten Harkins | Posted: Monday, May 13, 2013 6:35 pm Editor’s Note: Joey Stipek and Nick Harrison are both former Daily employees. An OU student journalist is suing President David Boren, along with the director of the Open Records Office for denying him access to records he believes are public. Joey Stipek, film and media studies senior, filed the lawsuit against Boren and Rachel McCombs after they failed to provide him, and other student journalists, electronic copies or database information of
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OU student journalist files lawsuit against
university for access to records
Paighten Harkins | Posted: Monday, May 13, 2013 6:35 pm
Editor’s Note: Joey Stipek and Nick Harrison are both former Daily employees.
An OU student journalist is suing President David Boren, along with the director of the Open Records
Office for denying him access to records he believes are public.
Joey Stipek, film and media studies senior, filed the lawsuit against Boren and Rachel McCombs after
they failed to provide him, and other student journalists, electronic copies or database information of
parking citations issued to students in the spring 2012 semester, according to the petition filed with the
Cleveland County Court on Friday.
When Stipek was working for The Daily in fall 2012, he filed a request for the records to see if there was
any preferential treatment given to individuals — namely student athletes — in regard to parking
tickets, Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison said in a letter to Boren.
Stipek first requested copies of the tickets around Sept. 10. The records were given with no information
about the person or persons to whom the vehicles belonged, according to the petition.
Thus, Daily reporter Arianna Pickard requested the same information again, this time asking for the
names of the persons, around Sept. 21, according to the petition.
Around Oct. 1 Pickard’s records request was denied. McCombs said the information was protected
under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, meaning they were exempt from the
guidelines set by the Oklahoma Open Records Act, according to the petition.
FERPA is a federal law that protects students’ educational records, such as transcripts and demographic
information.
Stipek requested similar records twice more, on April 13 and April 17, getting denied each time,
according to the petition.
In denying the parking ticket requests, McCombs said the university considers that information to be an
education record protected under FERPA, according to Daily archives.
“Any record that contains information that is directly related to a student and is maintained by the
university is protected by FERPA,” McCombs said in an email, according to Daily archives.
However, because these records aren’t kept private — being left on the windshield of a student’s
vehicle where anyone can grab them — they aren’t confidential, said Frank LoMonte, Student Press Law
Center executive director, according to Daily archives.
“Would the college put your report card underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your
transcript?” he said.
As well, the tickets aren’t educational records because they are issued to cars, not students, he said.
A copy of Harrison’s letter was delivered to Boren on Monday. The petition was sent to Boren,
McCombs, OU Legal Counsel and the OU Board of Regents.
University of Oklahoma student journalist sues for
access to parking tickets
By Sara Gregory | Published 05/14/13 6:57pm | Email | Print | Reprint this story
OKLAHOMA — A University of Oklahoma student is suing for access to parking ticket records the school
says are protected by a federal education privacy law.
Last fall, Joey Stipek, then The Oklahoma Daily's online editor, requested a database of parking tickets
issued for the spring 2012 semester. He was given statistical information about the number of citations
issued and dismissed each year, but the records he was given didn't include identifiable information
about the vehicle registration.
Another Oklahoma Daily reporter then asked for citations as well as names of individuals to whom the
cars were registered. Rachel McCombs, the school's open records director, denied their request in
October, saying the records were protected under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Later, when they asked for non-student parking tickets, the university said it was technologically unable
to comply.
Stipek, who will be interning at the Student Press Law Center in the fall, filed his lawsuit Friday after
months of discussions with the university. Given the university's repeated denials, a lawsuit is "the only
way" to get the records, said attorney Nick Harrison, an Oklahoma Daily alumnus who is representing
Stipek.
"Administrators try to sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest," Harrison said. "They
don't think they have to follow the law."
Harrison said Stipek requested the records because he was curious to see whether athletes or others at
the university received preferential treatment when it came to parking tickets.
"He wanted to know which ones are dismissed and why?" Harrison said.
Harrison believes the case is very straightforward, and noted that courts in Maryland and North Carolina
have said parking tickets are not protected under FERPA. In 2011, a judge ordered the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill to release parking tickets, writing that "FERPA does not provide a student
with an invisible cloak so that the student can remain hidden from public view while enrolled."
If the university believes they are protected under FERPA, Harrison said he questions why "they leave
these on windshield wipers all over campus."
A university spokeswoman said the school had no comment beyond a letter to the editor written by
Parking and Transportation Services Director Douglas Myers that was published in The Oklahoma Daily
in March.
"The university is bound to comply with current federal guidance," Myers wrote. "Should that guidance
change, the university will adopt policies that include the disclosure of student information alongside
that already available for faculty, staff and others."
Education records that "directly relate" to a student and that are "maintained" by the university are
confidential under FERPA. At issue at the University of Oklahoma is whether parking citations are
education records.
Journalists in Oklahoma and elsewhere have argued the citations are not education records because
they are issued to a car and not an individual. Myers told the Daily in March that the university's
database was not able to differentiate between citations issued to students and non-students.
McCombs and University of Oklahoma President David Boren are named in the suit, filed in the district
court of Cleveland County.
Contact Gregory by email or at (703) 807-1904 ext. 125.
Student journalist sues OU for access to parking
ticket information
Posted on 14 May, 2013 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
The University of Oklahoma’s claim that parking tickets issued to students are private educational
records is being challenged in court by a former online editor for The Oklahoma Daily.
Joey Stipek is asking a Cleveland County judge to order OU officials to release all parking citations issued
by the university.
Stipek’s lawsuit, filed Friday, stems from OU’s refusal to release electronic copies of parking citations
issued to students in the spring 2012 semester. OU’s open records officer, Rachel McCombs, claimed the
information is confidential under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA,
according to Stipek’s lawsuit.
OU and Oklahoma State University officials have made that claim for years even though courts in other
states have ruled otherwise.
In 1998, for example, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that FERPA “was not intended
to preclude the release of any record simply because the record contained the name of a student.”
(Kirwan v. The Diamondback, 721 A.2d 196, 27 Media L. Rep. 1399 (Md. Ct. App. 1998))
The court reasoned:
The federal statute was obviously intended to keep private those aspects of a student’s
educational life that relate to academic matters or status as a student.
Nevertheless, in addition to protecting the privacy of students, Congress intended to prevent
educational institutions from operating in secrecy.
Prohibiting disclosure of any document containing a student’s name would allow universities to
operate in secret, which would be contrary to one of the policies behind the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act.
Universities could refuse to release information about criminal activity on campus if students
were involved, claiming that this information constituted education records, thus keeping very
important information from other students, their parents, public officials, and the public.
We hold that “education records” within the meaning of the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act do not include records of parking tickets or correspondence between the NCAA and
the University regarding a student-athlete accepting a loan to pay parking tickets.
The university’s student newspaper had sought the records after learning that a basketball player had
nearly 300 parking violations, many for parking in handicapped spaces, and more than $8,000 in unpaid
parking fines.
In 2011, a North Carolina judge ruled that parking tickets issued to UNC athletes “are not education
records protected by FERPA.”
The “remote possibility” that repeated parking violations would result in disciplinary action “does not
constitute a sufficient ‘threat’ to cloak every student with invisibility about the number of parking tickets
he or she receives,” the judge said.
(Similarly, the judge ruled that student phone numbers on UNC coaches’ cell phone bills were public
records, saying: “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view while enrolled at UNC. The telephone number is not part of the
education record protected by FERPA.”)
The N.C. judge’s ruling was another example of courts telling universities that “FERPA is not to be
applied in an absurd way to conceal information that is not educational,” said Frank LoMonte, executive
director of the Student Press Law Center.
LoMonte recently said OSU officials shouldn’t just ignore those court rulings and should stop “relying on
this unsustainable interpretation of FERPA that is inconsistent with the way other people read it and
undermines the public interest.”
If parking tickets are indeed educational records, LoMonte told The Daily O’Collegian, then the
university is violating FERPA by placing them on windshields in public view.
“They certainly wouldn’t take your report card and stick it under your windshield wiper and leave it on
public display for anyone to see,” LoMonte said.
Stipek had sought OU’s parking tickets to determine if preferential treatment had been given to anyone,
especially athletes.
After being denied access, Stipek asked for all non-student parking citations. But the university replied
that it didn’t have the technological capability to redact student information from the database,
according to his petition.
Stipek’s lawsuit was filed against McCombs and OU President David Boren. Stipek’s attorney is Nicholas
Harrison, who received FOI Oklahoma’s 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The
Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
Former OU Daily Editor Files Lawsuit Against
University of Oklahoma Over Student Parking
Tickets
Posted by Dan Reimold on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 · Leave a Comment
A former Oklahoma Daily online editor is suing the University of Oklahoma to gain access to student
parking ticket records.
Joey Stipek, an OU senior, filed the lawsuit Friday against university president David Boren and Open
Records Office director Rachel McCombs. The suit alleges the school has repeatedly, and illegally,
rebuffed his efforts to acquire “records he believes are public”– and potentially newsworthy.
As he wrote in March, “OU gave out almost 52,000 parking citations last year, then dismissed almost a
third of them. But you won’t find out here whether athletes, student leaders, faculty or any other
special interest group got special treatment. The reason? OU won’t release the records.”
Why the lawsuit specifically? Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison, also a former OU Daily staffer, tells the
Student Press Law Center it is partially to keep the university honest. In his words, “Administrators try to
sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest. They don’t think they have to follow the law.”
The university is citing the privacy monster FERPA (the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act) as the
backbone behind its decision to not release the ticket info.
In a letter to the Daily this spring, the school’s director of parking and transportation services noted “the
university has provided information on locations of tickets given and statistics regarding the numbers of
tickets issued . . . [as well as] information related to any non-student ticket recipient, including faculty,
staff or university guests to whom the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply.” (Stipek
denies the latter claim in his lawsuit, saying the university told him it did not possess “the technological
capabilities” to separate students from non-students in its tickets database.)
Bottom line, for now, from OU’s view, student tickets are exempt from public scrutiny.
How truly private are parking tickets though, given their actual targets and method of distribution? In
March, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte told the Daily, “Tickets are issued to cars, not people.
The ticket is not a record belonging to and directly relating to the student. . . . A parking ticket is left
stuck on the window of a car where passing pedestrians can look at it. Would the college put your
report card underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your transcript?“
At least one superior court judge in North Carolina also finds the FERPA foundation shaky when it comes
to student parking violations. In a spring 2011 ruling related to a parking tickets access lawsuit filed by
UNC’s Daily Tar Heel and other media, judge Howard Manning voiced his support for transparency. As
he wrote at the time, “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view.”
In a related sense, the Daily has been waging a larger transparency fight since last fall– filing lots of
public records requests and even keeping a running tally on its website.
As top staff explained in an editorial in November, “The average citizen won’t often check a committee’s
minutes or a politician’s phone records, but these freedoms allow the press to do it for you and to
engage in the reporting that uncovers and stops abuses of power. . . . So from now on, we’ll be
watching. We’ll be filing more requests for access to significant records so we can fulfill our role by give
you the information you need to intelligently wield your political power.”
The most recent request, submitted by the paper yesterday, is for a rundown of all lawsuits filed against
university leadership in the past five years. The stated rationale is “to get a better perspective on what
this most recent lawsuit means for OU.”
Student journalist sues school for parking ticket
records
By Dan Reimold May 17, 2013 5:40 pm
A former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily student newspaper is suing the University of Oklahoma to
gain access to student parking ticket records.
Joey Stipek, an OU senior, filed the lawsuit against university president David Boren and Open Records
Office director Rachel McCombs. The suit alleges the school has repeatedly, and illegally, rebuffed his
efforts to acquire “records he believes are public” — and potentially newsworthy.
As he wrote in March, “OU gave out almost 52,000 parking citations last year, then dismissed almost a
third of them. But you won’t find out here whether athletes, student leaders, faculty or any other
special interest group got special treatment. The reason? OU won’t release the records.”
Why the lawsuit specifically? Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison, also a former OU Daily staffer, tells the
Student Press Law Center it is partially to keep the university honest. In his words, “Administrators try to
sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest. They don’t think they have to follow the law.”
The university is citing FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) — a law protecting student
privacy — as the backbone behind its decision to not release the ticket records.
In a letter to the Daily this spring, the school’s director of parking and transportation services noted “the
university has provided information on locations of tickets given and statistics regarding the numbers of
tickets issued … [as well as] information related to any non-student ticket recipient, including faculty,
staff or university guests to whom the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply.” (Stipek
denies the latter claim in his lawsuit, saying the university told him it did not possess “the technological
capabilities” to separate students from non-students in its tickets database.)
Bottom line, for now, from OU’s view: Student tickets are exempt from public scrutiny.
How truly private are parking tickets though, given their actual targets and method of distribution?
In March, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte told the Daily, “Tickets are issued to cars, not people.
The ticket is not a record belonging to and directly relating to the student … A parking ticket is left stuck
on the window of a car where passing pedestrians can look at it. Would the college put your report card
underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your transcript?”
At least one superior court judge in North Carolina also finds the FERPA foundation shaky when it comes
to student parking violations. In a spring 2011 ruling related to a parking tickets access lawsuit filed by
student and local media outlets, judge Howard Manning voiced his support for transparency. As he
wrote at the time, “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view.”
In a related sense, the Daily has been waging a larger transparency fight since last fall — filing lots of
public records requests and even keeping a running tally on its website.
As the editorial board explained in an editorial in November, “The average citizen won’t often check a
committee’s minutes or a politician’s phone records, but these freedoms allow the press to do it for you
and to engage in the reporting that uncovers and stops abuses of power … So from now on, we’ll be
watching. We’ll be filing more requests for access to significant records so we can fulfill our role by give
you the information you need to intelligently wield your political power.”
The most recent request submitted by the paper is for a rundown of all lawsuits filed against university
leadership in the past five years. The stated rationale is “to get a better perspective on what this most
recent lawsuit means for OU.”
Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student
press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at the
University of Tampa, where he also advises The Minaret student newspaper. He maintains the student
journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.
New motions filed in university suit
By Jessica Bruha, The Norman Transcript Jul 2, 2013
New motions were filed last week in a case involving a lawsuit filed against the University of Oklahoma
in May, according to plaintiff Joey Stipek.
Stipek, OU film and media studies senior and former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily, filed the
lawsuit after the university repeatedly refused to release student parking citation information to him
and other employees of the student newspaper.
Stipek said new motions filed Friday included a response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss and a
motion for summary judgment. In the response, Stipek requested the court to deny the defendants’
motion to dismiss, which was filed June 3, court records show.
The lawsuit was filed specifically against David Boren, president of OU, and Rachel McCombs, director of
the Open Records Office at OU.
The response states that in recent years, reporters at other student newspapers have requested campus
parking citations under their state’s Open Records laws after receiving tips that student athletes were
receiving special treatment. Stipek was attempting to write a similar story when he was denied access to
the records.
Stipek was told they were protected by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the
document states.
OU officials have previously stated that since student parking citations are protected by FERPA, they are
exempt from disclosure under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Since the records are directly related to a student and maintained by the university, they can’t be
disclosed under FERPA. This sets them apart from law enforcement records, which are required to be
disclosed to the public, the officials said.
However, OU officials said they have provided and will continue to provide information related to any
non-student ticket recipient, including faculty staff or university guests to whom FERPA does not apply.
Officials further stated they have already provided parking ticket information about Boren and other
university officials. Also, the ticketing system is an administrative function, not a criminal one, the
university said.
“This is the same argument which was also asserted unsuccessfully by school officials at the University
of Maryland in 1998 and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011,” Stipek’s attorney, Nick
Harrison, said in a response document.
In the response, Harrison said the plaintiff, Stipek, asserts the following:
· The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply to campus parking citations and the
University of Oklahoma is required to divulge all of its records under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
· In the alternative, even if some information is protected by FERPA, the burden falls upon the University
of Oklahoma to redact the protected information and the defendants cannot plead inadequacies in the
filing systems they created and maintained to avoid their obligations to produce public records under
the law.
Summary judgment: The motion for summary judgment was submitted with the response. In the
summary, Harrison argued against some of the items listed in the defendants’ motion to dismiss the
case.
· Naming a Proper Defendant: The defendants’ document says that the action should be dismissed on
technical grounds because the plaintiff did not name a proper defendant in his pleadings.
Harrison stated in the summary judgment that the defendants failed to provide sufficient grounds to
prevail under the standard for a motion to dismiss. He also said the plaintiff has named the appropriate
parties and a dismissal is not warranted, even if OU should have been named as a defendant.
· Provisions of the Oklahoma Open Records Act: The motion to dismiss says the defendants complied
with their obligations under the law and provided all of the required documents under the provisions of
the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
The summary judgment says the plaintiff is entitled to the requested records under the provisions of the
Oklahoma Open Records Act, further stating OU only cited FERPA and it does not apply to the plaintiff’s
request.
Even if some of the requested records must be withheld, the burden is on OU to maintain those records
in a fashion that allows them to redact the protected information and release the rest, the summary
states.
· Sovereign Immunity: The summary also states that the defendants cannot claim sovereign immunity
unless they have can point to a specific statutory basis for it.
“In their motion to dismiss, they failed to cite a legitimate statutory basis, alluding only to the Oklahoma
Governmental Tort Claims Act,” the document states.
The document continues to state why the action does not qualify as a tort but rather a writ of
mandamus.
· Writ of mandamus: The summary further states the defendants have a valid point that an affidavit is
required for the writ of mandamus, so the affidavit was filed with the response and the “procedural flaw
no longer exists.”
Plaintiff requests: In conclusion to the summary judgment, the document says the plaintiff asks that the
court issue a writ of mandamus compelling the defendants to release the records described in the
plaintiff’s demand letter dated May 8. The demand letter has been submitted as evidence, Stipek said.
The plaintiff also requests that the court award costs and fees and all such other relief as the court
deems proper, the summary judgment states.
Student speaks out about university lawsuit
By Jessica Bruha, The Norman Transcript Aug 2, 2013
“The lawsuit is the last thing we wanted to do. If they said they would give us the records now, we
would settle out of court. I’d drop the lawsuit.”
Those were the words of University of Oklahoma student Joey Stipek earlier this week, talking about the
lawsuit he filed against the university’s president, David Boren.
Stipek, also the former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily, filed a lawsuit in May after the university
refused to release parking citation information for him and other student newspaper employees.
The students were told the information was protected by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
(FERPA) and are exempt from disclosure under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Stipek said when they were requesting the information during one project, they requested it from
several different Oklahoma colleges. Parking tickets for the school president, an athletic coach and a
journalism professor were requested at many of the schools.
“They’re all state employees,” he said.
The students made their requests at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University
of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma Christian University and Oklahoma City Community College.
At OU, Stipek said he received an email saying they would be happy to turn over any parking tickets and
gave them a journalism professor’s. Stipek was told Boren and football coach Bob Stoops didn’t have
any tickets.
At OSU, he said they only received the information requested for football coach Mike Gundy. At OCU, no
information was given to them as they cited FERPA and the Oklahoma Records Act. At UCO, he said they
could not turn the records over due to “confidentiality reasons,” not citing FERPA or the Open Records
Act.
All parking citation information was made available at OCCC. Stipek said the community college told him
those records are not FERPA records and as long as he had media credentials, he could go in and inspect
the parking citations.
“This one college, where there’s none of these special interests, said these (records) aren’t protected by
FERPA,” he said.
Stipek said he doesn’t want people to think he’s out to get Bob Stoops, but he does want to know if
people are receiving special treatment.
“Another misconception about this is that we’re targeting athletes, specifically football players, and
that’s the furthest thing from the truth,” he said.
Stipek said he was told by other students and OU employees that student government and VIP
administrators were the ones receiving special treatment.
“I feel like Open Records requests just means that you’re participating in informed citizenry, and that’s a
good thing — asking questions and wondering where your money goes and who’s receiving special
treatment,” Stipek said, adding apparently the OU community disagrees.
Boren said they are complying with federal law when they do not turn over information relating to
students.
“I personally am sympathetic with releasing all parking ticket information. The university already
releases information in regard to myself and other individual officers, faculty and staff of the university,”
Boren said. “We are required to comply with federal law, which prohibits us from releasing information
of this kind which relates to students.”
The university has said before that since the records are directly related to a student and maintained by
the university, they can’t be disclosed under FERPA. This sets them apart from law enforcement records,
which are required to be disclosed to the public, university officials said. In addition, the ticketing system
is an administrative function, not a criminal one.
University officials also said they already have provided parking ticket information about Boren and
other university officials.
Boren added that if the federal law is changed either by congressional or judicial action, the university
would comply with the law.
Stipek said the whole case is built on precedence. There have been judges in North Carolina and
Maryland rule that the same records are not protected by FERPA, he said.
“It’s not some Harry Potter invisibility cloak,” he said. “Personally, if I were a taxpayer, I’d be kind of
embarrassed of their citing of this law for these things when there’s enough legal precedence that
proves otherwise.”
Stipek said he hopes other students feel inspired by his actions and will want to get involved in Open
Records and “ask the hard questions that are part of the fabric of journalism.”
“That was the big reason why I did the project. Hopefully someone will take notice at OU and be inspired
and follow my lead,” he said.
As for the lawsuit, Stipek is awaiting his Aug. 26 court date over the matter in Cleveland County District
Court.
University of Oklahoma parking tickets lawsuit
moved to federal court
By Samantha Vicent | Published 10/21/13 6:20pm | Email | Print | Reprint this story
OKLAHOMA — A journalist at the University of Oklahoma’s student newspaper who sued his school
seeking access to parking ticket records says he will challenge the school’s attempt to move the case to
federal court.
Joey Stipek, a special projects reporter at The Oklahoma Daily, filed a lawsuit in May against University
of Oklahoma President David Boren and open records office director Rachel McCombs after officials
repeatedly refused to provide him with information about parking tickets issued during the spring 2012
semester, saying the records were protected by FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
That case was dismissed in August after a judge determined Stipek should have filed the suit against the
University of Oklahoma rather than naming Boren and McCombs individually. Nicholas Harrison, Stipek’s
attorney, re-filed the suit on Stipek’s behalf in September.
Now, the University of Oklahoma has filed a motion to have the case heard by federal, not state, courts,
saying that it involves a question of how FERPA is applied, despite Harrison’s assertion that the issue at
hand is the university’s compliance with the state’s Open Records Act. After the case was removed to
federal courts, the school also filed a motion to dismiss the case entirely.
“Most state entities really don’t like to be in federal court. It’s sort of a rarity for state institutions to try
to move these things to federal court,” Harrison said. “A concern out there is they’re trying to deprive
my client of counsel.”
Harrison, a presidential business fellow for the U.S. Department of Personnel Management’s Small
Business Administration, questioned the school’s motive in removing the case from state court. U.S. law
states federal employees would be unable to represent private clients in a federal court case that
involves a federal matter of “substantial” interest.
Harrison must also be admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of
Oklahoma and register to enter electronic case filings by Nov. 15 or he will be unable to represent
Stipek.
Michael Nash, a spokesman for the University of Oklahoma, said the school does not comment on
pending litigation.
Stipek and Harrison said they respected but disagreed with the lower court’s decision to dismiss the
original lawsuit, and they will attempt to get the proceedings remanded to Cleveland County.
Most lawsuits involving public records disputes and FERPA have been tried in state courts. In 2012, the
7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s decision in a public records case involving
FERPA and the University of Illinois. In that case, brought by The Chicago Tribune, the appeals court said
the lawsuit needed to be resolved in state courts “because the Tribune’s claim to the information arises
under Illinois law.”
It will be “several months” before a judge makes any decisions in the federal case, but Harrison said that
won’t stop his client from trying to get the information he wants.
“Ultimately, we want the parking citations released,” Harrison said. “Whether it comes out in federal
court or state court, that’s not a big deal. I want the University of Oklahoma to comply with the law and
release the parking tickets.”
By Samantha Vicent, SPLC staff writer. Contact Vicent by email or at (703) 807-1904 ext. 126.
OU cites FERPA for moving parking ticket lawsuit
to federal court
Posted on 19 October, 2013 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
A University of Oklahoma student who has sued for access to parking citations issued by OU said he will
challenge the school’s move of the Open Records Act lawsuit to federal court.
Joey Stipek believes OU is attempting to disqualify his attorney, Nick Harrison, who is a Presidential
Management Fellow with the Small Business Administration.
U.S. law prohibits federal employees from representing clients before a federal court in a matter that
involves a substantial federal interest.
In OU’s petition, the university argued that Stipek’s claim under the state Open Records Act depends
upon the interpretation and application of the federal Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)
and, therefore, involves a “substantial question of federal law.”
OU has refused to release electronic copies of parking citations issued to students, claiming the
information is confidential under FERPA.
Harrison does not believe OU’s reason for moving the case is applicable.
“A case can be removed [from state court] where there’s a federal law that’s part of the plaintiff’s
original cause of action,” said Harrison. “However, a federal law that the defendant is using as a defense
doesn’t qualify.”
He said contesting the change of courts is “a lengthy process.”
“It buys them a few more months, and they still haven’t filed a substantive response to Joey Stipek’s
claims,” said Harrison.
FOI Oklahoma presented Harrison with its 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The
Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student. Harrison also served as an airborne
paratrooper in Alaska and completed two combat tours in Afghanistan and Kuwait.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
OU student sues school over refusal to release
parking-ticket records
By CURTIS KILLMAN World Staff Writer | 7 comments
What started out as a curiosity about whether certain students received favorable treatment on parking
tickets has evolved into a legal battle pitting the state Open Records Act against federal privacy law
concerns and a student against the university he attends.
Joey Stipek sued the University of Oklahoma earlier this year after administration officials refused to
make public an electronic database the school maintained of parking tickets issued by its personnel.
"I just wanted to see if favoritism was going on," said Stipek, 32, an OU student and former online editor
for the student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily.
The interest started in 2012, when Stipek said he and others had heard anecdotal reports of some
students having their parking tickets dismissed by school personnel.
But a series of requests for citation data by Stipek and others at the student paper resulted each time in
the university refusing to release parking ticket records that might identify individual students.
The university even refused to make public a request for individual parking tickets issued to all non-
students, saying the records were kept in such a way that prevented them from being segregated from
those issued to students, court records associated with the lawsuit state.
In its defense for not releasing the records, university officials cited the federal Family Educational Rights
and Privacy Act.
The federal law, known as FERPA, generally prohibits the improper disclosure of personally identifiable
information derived from education records.
Schools that violate FERPA restrictions jeopardize their continued receipt of federal funding, OU states
in court records.
An OU spokeswoman declined Tuesday to comment on the lawsuit, saying its stance in the case could be
found in public filings associated with the lawsuit.
Court filings in the lawsuit indicate OU contends any filings maintained by the university that relate to a
student are protected from disclosure by FERPA.
"The factual allegations in the petition give rise to the statutory interpretation of (FERPA), including the
redaction and/or release of personally identifiable information regarding students of the university," OU
claims in court filings.
Stipek's attorney, Nick Harrison, said in similar cases at other universities, school personnel released
parking citation records to the requestors.
Harrison said he could only find two lawsuits involving the release of parking citation data. In both cases,
universities that initially refused to release the records lost in state court battles, he said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the university earlier this month sought to have the case moved from state
court in Cleveland County to federal court in Oklahoma City.
Harrison said he believes the request to move the case to federal court is an attempt to have him
removed as an attorney from the case.
Harrison said since he filed the lawsuit on behalf of Stipek, he has taken a job working for a federal
agency in Washington, D.C.
Harrison said he is reviewing federal ethics rules to see if they prevent him from representing Stipek if
the case remains in federal jurisdiction. In the meantime, Harrison said he plans to oppose OU's attempt
to move the case to federal court.
"Really the only reason they want to move it over to federal court is to try to get me taken off the case
and deprive Joey of counsel," he said.
Harrison said he took the case on a contingency basis and it may be difficult for Stipek to find another
attorney if he has to step aside.
An expert on public records disclosure requirements said he believes the attempt to move the case to
federal court is a delaying tactic.
"OU is working awfully hard to keep this information from the public," said Joey Senat, a board member
of FOI Oklahoma Inc. and associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University.